How to Set Yourself Up for a Productive New Year

A Happy New Year to you and your family. Hope you’ve had a great year and achieved all you set out to achieve.

It was hard work, and you should take the last week of the year a little easy to rest, review the year, and plan for the upcoming one.

I was meaning to publish this piece a few days ago but I fell really sick and just didn’t have the mental capacity to write anything. I am much better now so here we are.

Structure to Set Yourself Up For a Very Productive Year Ahead

Jot down the big things in life that you want to progress that you wanted to make progress in for the coming year.

The easiest way to do this is to show you an example list, here is one. Your list will depend on your goals and priorities so it won’t be exactly the same (this is just a generic starting point).

1. Health (Your most important asset)
   • Lose fat
     • Go down from X kg to Y kg (while maintaining or improving muscle mass)
   • Improve cardio
     • Improve 5 km running time from X minutes to Y minutes
   • Improve upper body strength (your 10 RM matters much more than your 1 RM):
     • Get your bench press from X kg 10 RM to Y kg 10 RM
     • Get weighted chin up from X kg 10 RM to Y kg 10 RM
   • Improve lower body strength:
     • Get your leg press from X kg 10 RM to Y kg 10 RM
   • Improve flexibility and mobility
     • Do at least 25-50 sessions of yoga this year (once every 1-2 weeks)
   • Strengthen the chassis
     • Learn a racket sport (see why here)
     • Do at least 25-50 sprint sessions this year (once every 1-2 weeks)
2. Money (This allows you to live a great life)
   • Build/grow my online business
     • Try X idea (if you have no idea where to start, my recommendations are building your X, copywriting, and web design)
     • Try Y idea
     • Try Z idea
   • DCA $X per week in Equity/Crypto
3. Family/Dating (depending on your situation)
   • If dating, the items here would be related to getting a fuckbuddy or approaching more women (top of the funnel) or getting a girlfriend
   • Make yourself more attractive as a man (read this series to figure out what needs to be improved so you can build your list accordingly)
   • If married, the items here would be related to your family and children (spending more time with them)
     • Building some simple furniture with your children
     • Teaching your kids to swim
     • Take kids out for 12 treks this year to teach them about nature, wildlife, and survival in nature
     • or whatever is relevant to your situation
   • Things you want to do for your mom and dad
     • Talk to mom and dad at least once every 3-5 days (if you live away from home)
4. Freedom (What good is the money if you never use it)
   • Travel (You want to get out of the city at least once a month. It doesn’t have to be an expensive trip. Even something close to your location a few hours drive away is fine. Enjoy your life.)
     • Visit X place
     • Visit Y place
     • Visit Z place
     • Etc.
   • Trek
     • Trek X location
     • Trek Y location
     • Trek Z location
   • Adventure (a few bucket list type items)
     • Go rappelling
     • Do a waterfall trek
     • etc.
5. Learning (You should always be getting better each year)
   • Read 20 books this year (about 1 every 20 days)
   • Complete a course on Crypto (my free crypto course is here)
   • Complete a course on History
   • Do 3 courses in Computer Science
   • Or whatever is interesting to you
6. Major life changes (Plan them ahead)
   • Move to Thailand
   • Get X surgery
   • Get married
   • Try for a baby
   • Etc.

Things to Keep in Mind When You Build Your List

1) Make sure you add some sort of measure for each item.

Because what gets measured gets managed. The measure will help you stay honest in the long run and avoid any self-delusions.

If your strength remains the same at the end of the year, you haven’t gained as much muscle as you think. If your strength has gone up significantly, you have gained muscle. The measure (in this case the weight you are lifting) keeps you honest.

Benchmarking advice: If you don’t know what your starting point is, you need to do a benchmark. Eg. if you have no idea what your body fat is, get a DEXA scan. This will give you an objective starting point. You can get another DEXA at year end to see your progress.

2) Keep the goals reasonable.

1 year is not that long and if you are over-ambitious about everything, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

For example, aiming to lose 12-24 kg in a year is sustainable (1-2 kg a month). Wanting to take your bench from 60 kg to 100 kg in a year is not (unless you have great genetics).

Aiming to lose lots of weight AND wanting to gain lots of strength at the same time is not achievable in a year. There are limitations to what you can do in a year and you need to respect that.

Keep your goals achievable. There is no need to make things to hard that they are impossible to accomplish. You are not going to die at the end of the year, so leave stuff for next year too.

So if you are fat, you can do a weight loss year and then do a strength gain year next, and similar things for other items in the list as well.

3) Prioritize the Bottlenecks: Identify what held you back in the previous year (and account for it)

At the end of each year, you want to do a full review of the year and see how far you’ve come.

If you built a list like this last year, use it to see what goals you missed and why.

For example, if you never built an online business last year because you had no idea where to start, look for good resources online on the subject that can get you going. Once you make your first sale online, things start to fall in place and it all gets much easier.

The same is true of other things.

If you did almost no travel last year, why was that the case? Were you too busy with work? If so what can you do to free up time this year?

If you read only 8 books last year (a pitiful number), you should build a new habit and read for 30 minutes before you eat breakfast. Get the hard things out first thing in the morning.

Figure out the problem areas and the bottlenecks and prioritize fixing them.

Identify Q1 Items and Stick Them to The Mirror

Once you have your list ready, you want to identify what you want done in the first quarter of the year.

Break down the Q1 items into small achievable goals (a weekly checklist) and stick it to the mirror or somewhere else that is very visible to you and you see every single day.

If you see it every day, you are always alert and aware of the goals you need to achieve and the work that needs to be done.

Without the frequent visual reminder, you will forget about this list in one week and it will have no practical use.

STICK THE LIST TO THE MIRROR. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

Start With Momentum

As they say, a good start and you’re already halfway there.

If you didn’t make as much progress in the past year, I would strongly recommend getting a copy of Live Intentionally: 90 Day Self-Improvement Program.

It will give you the kick-in-the-ass momentum you need to have a GREAT year ahead.

If the last year was slow for you, the LAST thing you want to do is start your new year slow as well. How you start defines the momentum for the rest of the year.

Get moving because the competition isn’t going to wait for you. They will just keep marching on and you’ll be left behind.

With all that said, I wish you a very good year ahead and may you achieve more than what you seek.

– Harsh Strongman